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Too many historic neighborhoods in West Palm?

In the middle of Monday’s 2 1/2 hour marathon debate over capping the size of historic homes in West Palm Beach, Commissioner Bill Moss posed an interesting question: what happens to the neighborhoods full of “historic” homes that don’t feel all that historic?

In Florida, it takes 50 years for a home to become historic. In the early 1990s, when West Palm began designating historic neighborhoods, houses built after the early 1940s weren’t eligible for that distinction.

But today, any house built in the 1950s is historic, and even 1960 houses are now eligible.

Moss doesn’t want city staff to propose a bunch of new neighborhoods full of houses constructed in the ’50s and ’60s as historic.

“The homes themselves need to be historically significant, built in an architecturally unique style,” Moss said. “In the South end, around the 1950s, a builder named Ross built a bunch of these little square homes with a garage, front porch, two windows and they all looked alike. Most people who bought these homes added on to them over the years to make them unique and personalize them.

“To go now and to say because a house is 50 years to old, to say it’s historic and limit what people can do to their homes, to me is not the intention of the historic district.”

For the record, Moss said city staff hasn’t yet discussed designating these neighborhoods as historic, but he’s trying to be preemptive.